Archive for Fun

This weekend was Labor Day weekend, which means that summer is over for a large part of the country after today. If you live in an area that didn’t start the new school year in August, like they do here, then by Labor Day you are certainly going to be heading back to school next week. I don’t know of any public school systems that starts later than the week after the Labor Day holiday.

I like the way our schools worked with students and their parents on going back to school All you need was a haircut, a new pair of school shoes and a lunch box if your parents preferred to pack your lunch rather than buying the school lunches served in the school cafeterias. We showed up with a 3-ring notebook filled with lined notebook paper, a couple of sharp pencils or pens, and that was all we had to buy. But around here all the kids are given long lists of school supplies that change depending on what grade you will be in. The lists are very specific and include items that will be shared by everyone in the class – not for your own use. I don’t like that idea at. I would much rather have my own things and then donate money for kids who are needy and can’t afford to buy their own supplies.

Anyway, this weekend means a lot of the outdoor swimming pools will be closing after the Labor Day holiday. That always bugs me, because we have hot weather well into October and we could easily get another 4-6 weeks use of the swimming pools. But they close them anyway, especially the ones who depend on students to work as lifeguards. I know that the college kids have gone back to college and the high school students are in school during the day, but do we always need lifeguards?

Why can’t someone provide a service that sends an adult around to each of the pools that sign up as customers to check the chemicals, clean the pool of floating debris, and make sure everything is tidy? Why do you need a full time lifeguard to do those things? I think this is a good business opportunity for someone who knows about keeping pools cleaned and maintained.

Don’t you hate it when Halloween falls on a night in the middle of the week? I sure do – it screws up everyone’s parties and late nights, because we still have school and work the next morning after the holiday. Thanks to really bad weather, though, the kids around here got an extended Halloween this year.

While the grownups had last weekend to dress in costume and party their asses off for Halloween, the kids were supposed to do their trick or treating on Thursday night. But we had severe weather on Thursday, with the worst and most dangerous storms predicted for 6:00 pm until midnight. And, let me tell you, the storms were crazy bad. We had high winds – up to 50 mph. The wind was so strong it blew me backwards about 5 feet when I stepped around the corner of the house to take out the trash. It was bad in front of the house, but as soon as I stepped around the corner, I got the full blast and since I was turned half sideways and off balance, it blew my ass across the driveway and halfway to my neighbor’s fence!

So, most places canceled trick or treating for Thursday night and were telling everyone to stay the fuck home and be safe in case of tornadoes. A few old timers said the kids should go anyway and just suck it up and be tough. But that’s kinda stupid when it’s about having fun and there’s not damned law saying the holiday HAS to be on Thursday night. But some place did tell kids to go ahead and get it over with on Thursday. And a little boy was killed when a tree blew down onto a power line and the kid was electrocuted by the downed power line. So sad and so unnecessary.

So a lot of places had trick or treating on Friday night. AND some places said, fuck it, let’s just do it Saturday night. So, even with the bad weather, depending on where you lived and whether you were able to catch a ride, you had an extended Halloween this year, with some kids actually going out all three nights and getting triple the candy!

My little neighborhood grocery store set up a huge box of pumpkins for sale in the produce section because Halloween is just a month or so away. There are several different kinds, too. There are pumpkins for carving into Jack-O-Lanterns and pumpkins for cooking and other pumpkins for decorating. I have to admit that I bought one to make into a Jack-O-Lantern, even though I don’t have any kids. I like carving pumpkins and decorating with things like corn stalks and hay and scarecrows. It makes me feel like we are welcoming the change of seasons as well as celebrating Halloween.

Last year I bought 2 pumpkins and never got around to carving them. I ended up just painting them with acrylic paints, and they lasted for a very long time. Once you cut into them, bacteria starts to grow and they slowly rot. But if you don’t cut them, they can last for 3 months before they show any signs of rot. But on Facebook I read a tip from a friend that you can douse the cut and cleaned pumpkin in a bath with bleach, which kills the bacteria so it lasts longer. That gives me hope and I will try that trick this year to see if it really works.

So, my next questions is, what do I carve into my new pumpkin? A scarey face or just some kind of design? I have seen some really cute designs…..

The worst thing about winter for me is the shorter days and long, cold nights. It is dark when I wake up in the morning and it’s also dark when I leave work and drive home. If it is raining or snowing, the drive home takes 3-4 times as long and can be a gridlocked nightmare.

Tonight was like that – raining a cold rain that made the roads slick, so people who were going too fast for road conditions were spinning out and ending up in ditches. Thankfully, I know to slow down and, more importantly, watch out for the idiots and give them plenty of room to wreck their own cars and not take me with them.

I got home and made a bowl of beef stew and then surfed the cable channels – nothing good on. Surprise, surprise. So, instead of spending the evening sitting on the couch, I’ll be sitting at the kitchen table and working on some crafts. The first project I want to tackle is covering old cans with plastic lids and making them decorative. I’ll be wrapping the can with yard, spray painting the can lids to coordinate, and then gluing embellishments around both the can and lid with a glue gun.

After I decorate a few cans that will become gifts, then I will make a batch of craft dough and cut out some interesting shapes to get ready for Valentine’s Day. I have cookie cutters in a variety of heart shapes and sizes, and I will be baking the dough ornaments, then painting and embellishing them to give away as gifts next week.

What do you do on a cold, rainy winter night when there is nothing on TV?

My house is so messy I really need to spend a day doing a major de-cluttering and deep cleaning, but I’m just not in the mood for housework lately. It seems like when the sun goes down before 5:00 in the winter time that I get bummed out and just want to cocoon. I’m just not productive after dark in the winter time.

Maybe I should dedicate 2 or 3 hours of a Sunday morning to the cleaning. most weekends I am out late on Saturday night and I need Sunday morning for sleeping in and getting my rest. I feel like I actually recharge my body’s energy batteries by sleeping late on Sundays. But I have to carve out some time for housework someplace and it looks like Sunday morning is the most likely target.